#nyungar

Wikipedia

Noongar Language Centre

edx course

Glossary

Sharing Noongar Culture

Stories

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Seasons

Plant and Animal Names

Music

Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company

To celebrate International Year of Indigenous Languages, the Royal Australian Mint launched the new coins.

Money, or an object which abstractly represented the value of goods and services, did not exist in Australia before European colonisation. Trade occurred, but it was between items deemed to be of similar worth, for example, pearl shell, quartz, food or songs. With the entry of money into the Indigenous economy, new words were needed to refer to coins and later, notes.

Most Indigenous words for money come from words for “stone”, “rock” or “pebble”, no doubt in reference to the size and shape of coins. On the new 50 cent coin, you’ll find words for “stone” from across Australia: 

No idea if anyone is still doing these but I learned about a Cool Language (tm) (aka every language) so here have some free knowledge

What is the language called in English and in the language itself? It is known as Noongar or Nyungar although more other spelling exist 

Where is the language spoken? Noongar is spoken in Western Australia 

Which language family does it belong to? What are some of its relative languages?

The language belongs to the Pama-Nyungan family and is related to Dyirbal, which I featured on my blog before

What does the language sound like?

Here is a video of a song in Noongar

What kind of grammatical/morphological features does the language have?

Subject-Object-Verb Order

Agglutinative

Historically had no numbers higher than 3 with addition to ‘boola’ for many and ‘boola boola’ for many many

This is how you would count in Noongar nowadays:

Keyen

Koodjal

Dambart

Koodjal Koodjal

Maar (relates to fie fingers on the hand)

Maar Keyen

Maar Koodjal

Maar Dambart 

Maar Koodjal Koodjal

Maar Maar

What do you personally find interesting about the language?

I found a course in Noongar language and culture on EDX and because I have about half a year to spend at home before going back to uni I decided to broaden my horizon a little and learn something about a language I never heard about before and that is spoken at the other end of the world. I am currently learning many things that are valuable to my linguistics degree. The people behind this course support outsiders learning the language although surely non-fluent Noongar people and white people living on the Noongar boodja (country) benefit from this more than I do (but this is a free online course so please don’t worry about me stealing resources).

The Pinnacles

I remember going to the Pinnacles as a kid, and wandering around this patch of yellow-sand desert poking up out of the coastal scrub, filled with eerie rocks that were much bigger than me... a place to lose yourself in, to watch the shadows grow longer and the patterns of the wind on the sand. We were always told that they were fossilised trees, which had decayed and filled with a harder substance (calcrete) than the limestone surrounding them. Nyungar people told me it's a punishment place, where a family who broke Law in a big way were punished by being turned into stone. Other people who broke Law were sent to spend time there, amongst the frozen remnants of their ancestors.